| |
|
|
|
|
There was a church here in the 12th Century, but there
was a grand rebuilding along Perpendicular lines in the
early 15th Century. The church was destroyed by the Great
Fire, and rebuilt by the Wren workshop, the tower being
completed right at the start of the 18th Century. The
church sits flush with the other stone-faced buildings on
the north side of Lothbury, rather anonymously but
entirely at ease with its secular neighbours.A number of the City of London's churches
were lost in the 19th Century as they were demolished and
the land sold off for large prestige building projects,
the largest and most prestigious of which was the gradual
expansion of the Bank of England. St Margaret is now the
closest church to the Bank, being in its back yard so to
speak, but the wealth that has accrued to it has been of
a different kind, for no other City church has benefited
to the same extent from the acquisition of furnishings
from lost churches.
You enter from the south-west
corner, and from the long Galilee area there are
entrances into the body of the church and a pleasingly
prayerful south aisle chapel. Both are crowded. This is a
result of the early 20th Century restoration by Walter
Tapper, who seems to have had pretty much a free-run of
the stored furnishings from demolished Wren churches. The
two stars here are the extraordinarily elaborate late
17th Century font in the south aisle, which came from St
Olave Jewry, and the massive wooden screen from All
Hallows the Great. This is a great Berlin Wall of a
thing, slicing across the church majestically from wall
to wall, its upper storey like a great doorcase, the
rather alarming eagle waiting to dart down on anyone
daring to enter the sanctuary.
Moses and Aaron came from St
Christopher le Stocks, the beautiful Anglo-catholic
reredos in the south aisle from St Olave Jewry (what a
jewel of a church that must have been!) and the vast
tester to the pulpit came from All Hallows the Great - it
sits rather awkwardly with the heavy screen, but both
originally came from the same church of course. They are
as solid as the Bank across the road. All in all this is
a splendid church as befits its location, full of
treasures which did not originally belong to it, which
seems curiously appropriate. The church appears to be
open every day during the week.
Simon Knott, December 2015
location: 3/037
status: working parish church
access: open Monday to Friday, services on
Sunday
                    
Commission
from Amazon.co.uk supports the running of this site
|
|
|
|
|
|
